Last Thursday, Plymouth Whitemarsh High School (Pennsylvania) hosted a delegation of 15 track and field athletes and two coaches from Kenya and Nigeria as ambassadors of sorts for the U.S. Department of State’s Sports United initiative, an international exchange program aimed at fostering interaction between young athletes with intellectual disabilities.
Whilst standing on the sidelines, Matthew Aaron, the president and CEO of Special Olympics Pennsylvania said as he observed,“If you look around this track you don’t see a group of Kenyan athletes over there and a group of Nigerian athletes over here and a group of Special Olympics athletes there. You just see a bunch of athletes training together and learning from each other and having a good time. It doesn’t matter whether they have an intellectual disability or are from a different culture or what their background is. All you see out here tonight is a big group of athletes.”
“Our Special Olympics athletes don’t want to be special and apart from everybody else. They just want the same opportunities as everybody else — to have friends and be part of a team and get a chance to compete.”
The young athletes also got in a good hour or so of training, participating in the javelin, 100 meters and other long distance events and would join the Special Olympics athletes the following day at the Penn Relays, the largest amateur track and field competition in the United States.
“This is my first time out of Nigeria, and it’s been really exciting,” said Baznu Aki Ocean, a 16-year-old athlete and Olympic hopeful. “It’s great meeting people from different places and getting to know what they do and who they are. We’ve been to Washington, D.C and so many places on this trip and we’re going to the Penn Relays.”
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